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What You Need to Know
About Library Technology
Roy Tennant
So this happened.
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ALL of what I just described
happened within 15 years:
1978-1993
ALL OF IT
What happened in the
next 20 years?
Photo courtesy Robert Scoble, flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/, CC BY 2.0 License
What can we learn?
The Last Century in Info Tech
The Last 20 Years of the Century
As of 16 January 2015
We needed this… To eventually get here…
Photo courtesy Robert Scoble, flickr.com/photos/scobleizer/, CC BY 2.0 License
What’s different about
library technology?
Mostly Public
Organizations
Photo by Wally Gobetz, Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license
Finite Resources
Photo by 401(K) 2012, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0 license
Aging Workforce
Special Requirements
• Specialized metadata (i.e., MARC)
• Specialized workflows
• Often constrained conditions (e.g.,
limitation on suppliers, forced reliance on
central IT, etc.)
• Collegial nature of many institutions makes
fast adoption of technological change
difficult
Gartner Hype Cycle
How to Ride
Shotgun Down the
Avalanche
Create Agile Institutions
• Minimize red tape
• Maximize communication channels
• Use task forces to accomplish group work
• Encourage new ideas, risk-taking, and
trying things out
• “Release” early and often
• Kill things off when they stop providing
value
Foster Ongoing Staff
Development
• Provide opportunities for professional
development
• Support conference attendance
• Encourage use of current awareness
resources
Offer Compelling Local
Services
• What can only be done locally, or done
most effectively at a local level?
• Suggestions:
– Special collections
– Services requiring personal contact
– Services requiring physical spaces (e.g., study
space)
– Services requiring specific knowledge of local
needs
There Are NO
Permanent Parts
• Monitor your environment
• Build for constant change
• Your job description will change
• Professional development is an
ongoing responsibility
• What you know now is likely what you
won’t need to know in the near future
Get Ready for the New
• Seek out the next big thing
• Monitor & evaluate initially, don’t adopt
too quickly
• If it approaches inevitability, prepare
Prepare
• Inform staff early and often
• Invite participation in imagining futures
• Watch for potential champions
• Provide space and time for innovation
• Cut the deal — support for a period of time,
then cut & run or to production — fail early
and try often
• No penalties for trying — only for NOT
trying!
The Way Forward
• Create agile institutions and foster ongoing
staff development
• Offer compelling local services
• Refocus staff on direct user services
• Realign priorities
• Improvise, Innovate, and Collaborate
Final Advice
Final Advice
• Neither an early adopter nor laggard be
• Technology with market share tends to beat
better technology
• Do not underestimate the power of an
upstart with a great idea
• It’s the customer, stupid!
• Back it up or kiss it goodbye
• Never make your expensive resource wait
on your inexpensive one
Final Advice
• Never underestimate the power of a
prototype
• Buy hardware at the last possible moment
• Don’t buy software with a zero at the end of
the release number
• If you’ve learned a technology thoroughly,
it’s already on its way out
• For any project, there are several ways it
can succeed and countless ways it can fail
